With the rapid growth of the Internet has emerged multiple ways of facilitating transactions between buyers and sellers conveniently, quickly, and usually securely. Electronic commerce, commonly referred to as eCommerce, is continuing to grow at an extraordinary rate. Companies such as Amazon.com and eBay.com are examples of popular eCommerce Internet sites.
Amazon.com allows a shopper equipped with a computer connected to the Internet and a credit card to purchase items displayed on its website. eBay.com, on the other hand, is a forum for individual buyers and sellers to engage in trades, covering a great variety of merchandise by motivated sellers and buyers who may trade anything from a rare coin collection to a second-hand piece of furniture.
Websites that facilitate auctioning of goods and services, such as eBay.com, derive success from quickly building a critical mass of sellers and buyers who trust each other—that the goods are described accurately by the sellers, with full disclosure, that they will be delivered as promised by the sellers, and the payment will be made as promised by the buyers.
However, unscrupulous buyers and sellers may create multiple accounts so as to manipulate a bid for a particular product. For example, a seller can create multiple fictitious buyer accounts that will also bid for his product, with the intended result of inflating the final price by posting higher and higher bids, which legitimate buyers are supposed to follow. Legitimate buyers are misled into thinking that a real frenzy to purchase the product is taking place.
Another problem consists of sellers and buyers, who after closing a particular transaction, simply choose to walk away from the deal, thereby reneging on an auction contract.
These problems are well known and many auction sites have sought to address them by introducing various means of bidder authentication and deal compliance. Authentication refers to the proactive verification of a particular buyer or seller's identity. This typically takes the form of a process referred to as “enrollment” or some form of registration, wherein buyers and sellers fill out various forms or produce evidence establishing their true identities. Deal compliance is reinforced by, for example, telling buyers and sellers that if they are caught engaging in unscrupulous bids or reneging on deals, they will be forever barred from doing business on the auction site.
Buyers wanting to bid for a product at an auction website typically use a computer equipped with an Internet connection and a browser. More recently, several auction websites have begun to pursue strategies that give users access to their auction accounts using wireless devices. Most use wireless devices, such as pagers or SMS (short message service)-enabled mobile phones, for the purpose of notifying users of the status of their bids or transaction. For instance, if a bid is beaten, a message can be sent to all participating buyers that have wireless devices, such as pagers or mobile phones with SMS reception enabled.
Some systems allow users to send commands from wireless devices that are enabled for two-way data transmission, for example using SMS. However, current systems are cumbersome, requiring users to embed e-mail addresses or other fixed commands in the text body of the SMS message, instructing the auction engine which action to take. Once sent by the bidder, the message is then sent to the specified e-mail address, eventually to reach the auction engine. Since the e-mail address is typically a common one to which several other bidders send their messages, the instruction for the auction engine and the particular product being bid upon must be specified within the message itself. Alternatively, it is also possible to specify different e-mail addresses pertaining to different commands, such as bid up commands. However, this would also entail that the particular product and simplified instruction be included in the message itself.
Mobile devices equipped with Internet access via the Wireless Application Protocol or “WAP” are expected to gain popularity in the coming years. Some auction sites now allow mobile devices using WAP access to their site. To access the Internet, users dial-in with their mobile devices to “WAP Internet gateways.” The mobile user then browses the Internet using their WAP phone's small screen.
In the context of an auction website, the user accesses the auction website using their WAP phone and logs in, perhaps enters a password, and then eventually gains access to his account. The “logged in” mobile user may now engage in basic auction activities, such as reading messages notifying him of the status of a bid, and instructing the auction server to raise his bid if it has been beaten.
The fact that the WAP user is required to have a WAP-enabled device as opposed to using the present “legacy” digital mobile phones acts as a limiting factor to growth of auction use through this medium. Further, until the introduction of General Packet Radio Service or “GPRS” or true “anytime, anywhere” wireless access for GSM devices, WAP Internet access will continue to be cumbersome, requiring users to dial-in to a gateway and log in to the auction website each time they want to access their accounts. This necessarily takes time and in most instances, costs much more than a typical computer and browser-based Internet access. Hence, WAP access via a mobile device is simply an alternative to a computer connected to the Internet. The log in process, bid up process, and so on, is similar to the processes a computer Internet user would perform to do the same things on an auction website.
Although the preceding discussion focused on auction websites, where buyers outbid each other for a certain product or service, many of the above discussions can also be applied to other types of eCommerce and auction business models, such as reverse auctions (i.e., buyers set prices which sellers are supposed to meet) and fixed price models.